Thanks to educated migrants and strong economic growth in the past decade, India?s financial capital Mumbai has added around two lakh households in the top most, socio-economic classification, SEC A category between 2001 and 2009. It is the highest amongst the four metros, according to a new research. Moreover, with Mumbai?s SEC A households being richer than most of its metro ilk, Amchi Mumbai ?s position as the country most attractive consumer market has been reinforced.
The growth of suburbs like Gurgaon and Noida as new-age business hubs, and concomitant shifting of young, educated and well-paid IT/BPO workforce to these satellite towns have made the national capital lose over 50,000 SEC A households in the same period. As a city cluster, the national capital region remains the country?s biggest market for host of consumer goods ??from cars to colas. Perhaps for the same reason, Chennai, too, has gained over 50,000 SEC A homes, while their numbers have stagnated in Bangalore.
The national capital has the highest number?5.3 lakh?households in the top socio-economic classification SEC A category in the country. But with 54% of its 5.1-lakh SEC A households (2.8 lakh) in the high-income bracket (monthly household income over Rs 50,000), Mumbai is the country?s richest SEC A city. The comparable figure for Delhi is 51% or 2.6 lakh households. The garden city, Bangalore, comes a distant third with just 2.4 lakh SEC A households, with over 1.1 lakh in the high-income segment.
The FE-Indicus Analytics series on Deconstructing the SEC Matrix of India is based on the information from on-going large-scale primary surveys by Indicus, various rounds of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) surveys, National Data Survey of Savings Patterns of Indians (NDSPPI), District-level Household Survey (DLHS), etc.
The series will present a never-before detailing on the emerging demographic & psychograhic profiling of urban Indian consumers based on their SEC.
Though many consumer goods marketers have been complaining about the limitation of the over two-decade- old socio-economic classification??essentially segmenting consumers on the basis of occupation and education??for its disconnect with income and demand, it still remains the yardstick in the absence of an alternative, commonly-accepted measure. Many big marketers, like the country?s biggest consumer expendables maker Hindustan Unilever, overlay the SEC with their customised matrix??product ownership at the household-level for one??to get a more detailed picture of their consumers.
The metros pretty much mirror urban India on the SEC A composition, with most hugging the national urban average of 13.5% (SEC A as proportion of total households). For all urban India, the number of SEC A households in 2009 is 87 lakh, with the four metros and Bangalore accounting for almost a fifth. Kolkata and Chennai have the least proportion of rich households among metros, at 41% and 39%, respectively. In the last decade, Mumbai has witnessed its household count rise up almost by a third, though the growth in SEC A households here has been almost double.
?Next Week: How SEC classes are spread out across life stages in urban India
